Born in apocalypse

"His memory, master?" Quite confused by what his master was suggesting, Azarex repeated it to confirm whether he had heard the same thing or not.

"Yes, the worm’s past memory... you said you could do that, right?" Dhruv muttered with an awkward smile.

"I mean, yes, I can see its memory, but how would that help us?" Azarex asked, still confused.

"I don’t know. I just want to find out if the monster could help us identify anything helpful about the thunder and the monster that is stealing all the cores. The chances might be low, but there isn’t harm in trying, right?" Dhruv explained his intention as to why he wanted to see the monster’s memory as clearly as possible.

Nodding his head, Azarex muttered with some hesitation, "Hmmm! It’s a good idea, but there might be a problem, Master."

"Why is that?" Dhruv asked instantly.

"The problem is... at this level, I can’t really see the past of the monster with proper control. Every time I use my skill, I will get some random clips of the monster’s past..." Saying this, Azarex paused for a moment.

Collecting his thoughts, he muttered, "Usually, I could only see the last day’s memory of the monster... two days if I try my hardest. And with these randomly occurring clips spanning two days, it’s really difficult to gather accurate information."

With a sad expression, Azarex conveyed the limitations of his skill.

"Ohhh! Well, that could be a problem, but let’s at least try first..." Dhruv insisted on continuing the plan. After inspecting all the batches of the corpse, he was eager to uncover the secrets of the core-stealing monster.

"As you command, Master..." Muttering these words, Azarex walked toward the worm. Putting his hand on the monster’s skin, he closed his eyes while chanting something weird.

A moment after his chanting, a dark, deathly mist began to emit from his hand. Escaping his grasp, the mist quickly spread apart and covered the entire monster—even the part that was under the snow connected with the mist.

Even though it was dead, the corpse began to slowly absorb the mist. As the mist settled on the skin, it started healing all the damage caused. In just a matter of seconds, the crushed part of the body was healed—it looked as good as new.

After all the healing, there was still quite a bit of mist left. As time passed, the rest of the mist began to coalesce at a rapid speed. Unbelievably fast, the mist took the form of a core and moved toward the part of the corpse where the old core had rested. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Rumble...

The sound of something beating rang in the surroundings as the worm began to move from its place. In less than five seconds, the monster had returned from the realm of death to become undead.

Screech!

Tanking in its words, the monster emerged from the ground and moved toward its master. Reaching him, it calmly stopped, awaiting the next order.

Instead of giving any command to the monster, Azarex began to move closer to it. Stopping at the point from where he could touch the place a meter behind its head, he closed his eyes.

’Here it is...’ Locating the core of the monster, Azarex quickly began to send a thin thread of his own mana toward it. As the thread moved toward its destination, he started preparing the next spell.

After waiting for a second, the time came as the thread was almost about to touch the core. The moment his thread touched the monster’s core, Azarex whispered, "Necrochronicle Gaze..."

Information began to seep into his brain as everything in front of him turned black. Darkness faded as the past began to unfold.

Calming himself down, Azarex watched the scene unfolding with as much focus as he could muster.

’Huh! What is this? Why is there nothing but ice in front of him for the past two minutes...’ Azarex thought as he found that all he was seeing was snow in front of him.

Although he hadn’t expected some bizarre revelation, he hadn’t expected that he would just watch snow in front of himself either...

Even though it appeared as boring, it was something he should have expected after all. The monster was a type that hunted its prey with the help of vibrations, so it didn’t need to get out of the snow that much to locate the prey. The only time it needed to act was when it was ready to attack.

After watching the whiteness continue to play in front of him for a while, Azarex had a feeling that there wasn’t going to be any useful information here.

Sending his mana to the core, he quickly changed the course of the vision playing in front of him. Nothing changed, as the monster was still under the snow.

After waiting for a minute, he sent his mana once again. The result remained the same as the monster continued to lay dormant.

As Azarex sent his mana for the fourth time, something changed. The vision was still the same—the monster was still under the snow—but he had begun to hear something faint in the distance.

C~r~...

Instead of sight, Azarex focused everything on his hearing and tried to discern what was going on. After some patience, he recognized the origin of the sound.

Crack

’Hmmm! Is this the scene from when the thunder is about to start or somewhere in the middle...’ Azarex was still in the middle of his thought when he noticed something.

The vision in front had changed. It was still snow... but the snow was moving. It was impossible for snow to move this much, which only meant one thing...

The monster was moving, and from what he could interpret, it was going upward.

’Why is it going above... shouldn’t it go and hide underground...’ Azarex thought, as he couldn’t understand why the monster had made that decision.

He was about to get the answer when something happened... something that was bound to happen. Everything in front of him blacked out...

’Ahhh! Why does it happen at that moment? Why does the clip have to end at this moment?’ With clear frustration, Azarex sent a bit of mana, hoping to get something useful from the next clip as well.

His wish didn’t come true, as for the next few times, the only thing he was able to see was snow... snow... and soil.

’Soil... huh! The monster had gone underground. Is it to save itself from the thunder? That should be the case. Uhhh! It made the right decision, but why had it gone above in the first place.’ Pondering this question once again, Azarex watched the scene unfold in front of him.

Nothing extraordinary happened as the monster continued to dig for a few more seconds. And when it had dug enough, it settled itself there and slept... yes, the monster slept while the thunder continued to happen.

Even though there wasn’t anything remarkable in the clip so far, Azarex had concluded something after adding little pieces of clues over the past ones.

’Judging from the actions of the monster, can it be said that the thunder isn’t as frequent as we had thought it to be?’

After looking at the cave and everything else, Dhruv had previously proposed the idea that the thundersnow storm might be a very frequent incident in the dungeon... but that clearly proved to be false.

Azarex had concluded this because, in his opinion, if the thunder were to be a frequent thing, then why would the worm have to move up to see what was happening... wouldn’t it make sense for it to just go down from the moment of hearing the crackling?

"Master, there is something interesting I found..." Azarex muttered.

"What?" Truly excited, Dhruv quickly lifted his head.

"See, as the thunder began, the monster started..." Bit by bit, Azarex began to explain everything he had seen. After detailing the scene, he even proposed what the action of the monster could mean.

"Huh! Truly interesting, but we shouldn’t judge it that quickly..."

"Maybe the reason the monster got up was to check the condition of the thunder... or maybe it had felt the vibration of some monster above itself. We couldn’t be certain just with this one vision..." Dhruv muttered, slightly disappointed by the revelation.

He knew and had experienced firsthand that one shouldn’t come to a conclusion without being certain that there isn’t anything they were missing. And here... here everything was filled with plot holes.

Looking toward his second guardian, he muttered, "... So, Azarex, can you continue looking, or was that it..."

"Yes! I can, Master... there are a few more shots for today. If I couldn’t find anything, then I will try to look for something in yesterday’s vision. I can’t be certain that it will achieve something, but we wouldn’t lose anything after trying a little harder... right?" Azarex asked with a smile over his skull.

"Right!" Dhruv nodded, totally agreeing with his guardian.

’Huh! Started looking already...’ Dhruv thought as he saw that Azarex was already in his zone.

With nothing else to do for the moment, Dhruv opened his status and began to scroll through it. After a few minutes, as he was looking through the skill page, a voice interrupted him...

"Master, you should see this.." He heard a hurried voice from his guardian.

"See? But how can..." Before he could even finish his words, something began to play in front of him.

"Huh! Wha-" Dhruv’s words stuck in his mouth as he watched the scene happening in front of him.

Everything in front of him was the same... it was almost perfectly overlaying with the reality in front of him... the only reason he was able to differentiate was because there was a gigantic ravine in front of him.

"A ravine dividing two parts of the dungeon..." Dhruv thought aloud as he got impressed by the sheer size of the thing.

If it was just a ravine, Dhruv could have coped with it, but there was something else... There was a bridge connecting both parts.

"Who had put a bridge in the middle of that ravine..."